Oprah’s ‘secret son’ ambushes her in public

Oprah Winfrey had an awkward encounter when a man who claimed to be her son ambushed her after she left Stephen Colbert’s Late Show.

Winfrey had gone on the program to show off her 15 pound (6kg) weight loss when she bumped into the bitter man, Calvin Mitchell. Mitchell confronted the TV mogul claiming that Oprah turned her back on him after helping to raise him for five years.

The National Enquirer reportedly prepared the disgruntled ‘son’ for the ambush after he said that he wanted to reconnect with his ‘lost mother’ after 20 years. He also provided a photo of himself as a child with Winfrey to the National Enquirer.

“I want to ask Oprah, ‘Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me?’” Mitchell told RadarOnline in a recent interview.

The heartbroken man said that abandoning him as a teen left him in a sorry depressed state.

“I’m still empty,” he confessed. “I’m still searching. I don’t have closure on this. I just don’t understand.”

Oprah was seen outside the studio pressing her hand against his chest, much like she does with her other fans.

The National Enquirer also reported that Oprah was upset when she found out that Mitchell had reached out to the tabloid to talk about their past just days before the ambush.

Mitchell apologized, and begged the TV star to listen to him.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but it was the only way to get in touch with you,” Mitchell reportedly told Winfrey.

He then asked if they could talk, at which point Winfrey reportedly told him: “Honey I’m on my way to the United Nations right now so I can’t talk to you.”

She then reportedly added; “Calvin, you just take care of yourself.”

In his interview, Calvin Mitchell said his first encounter with Winfrey was when he was cast as an extra on the ABC-TV urban drama There Are No Children Here. At 11-year-old, he slipped past security picked a diet coke out of a cooler and offered it to Oprah.

The TV Show host was so touched that she offered him a position as a ‘personal body guard’. When filming ended, Oprah reportedly maintained contact with the young man before asking his mother Eva if she could adopt him.

However, Mitchell’s mother denied her the opportunity: “It felt strange because I felt if someone wanted to help me with my children, that’s one thing. But to actually adopt one child knowing I have others? I couldn’t allow her to separate my children.”

Despite the refusal, Oprah’s partner, Stedman Graham, continued to treat Mitchell as his own son.

Oprah with her partner Stedman Graham

“He used to take me to Chicago Bulls games, and we went to the black rodeo that he hosted every year. We had a close relationship. Oprah and Stedman were like family to me” Mitchell told Radar.

The disgruntled 35-year-old even recalls the messages that were attached to the childhood gifts that Oprah gave him: “To my son Calvin, I love you.”

When Mitchell was older, Oprah paid his school fees at The Piney Woods School, a prestigious Christian boarding school for African Americans in Mississippi.

He, however, grew homesick but he decided to drop out of school in his junior year: “I just wanted to come home, and Oprah didn’t understand that. She told me, ‘Calvin, just try to work it out. You can do it. Just hang in there.’ She was trying to inspire me to do what was right. But even after the long pep talk she gave me, I still left.”

His choice did not make Oprah very happy, and the media mogul make a decision to cut him out of her life.

“By leaving school, I’d failed my whole family. I’d let everybody down. But I thought Oprah and Stedman would still be a part of my life. At one point, it was like I’d lost my whole world,” lamented Mitchell.

According to Mitchell, these feelings of abandonment made him spiral into depression with thoughts of suicide.

In the past, Oprah has reportedly said she never “felt compelled” to have children because she “wasn’t mothered well”.

The only biological child Oprah had was born when she just 14-years-old, but the infant died soon after he was born.